Farewell to the First Congregational Church in Norwalk, Conn. (bound with other addresses)

[P. 226,227.] — " Regard him as coming under the desecrated law" — " then consider the import of his life, taken in the simple aspect of a free, faithful^ lov- img, unfaltering obedience — obedience unto death. And then, if the speculative in- Btinot rushes in to insist on the absurdity of obedience in a being whose nature is essential deity, let it be enough to reply that there is no being in the universe, of whom obedience can be predicated in so vast a sense as of God. For though God is under no obligations to another. He is yet under obligations to goodness to devise, do, bear, forbear, suffer, all which the conception or idea of infinile goodness and love contains. He isreally under the same law of obligation that we were jmrf«- ffimd casi oj', and it is the glory and greatness of his nature that he de- lights eternally to aclinowledge this law. Christ is the manifested life rei>eal- ing this everlasting obediejice of the divine nature. AU that he does and suffers is but an expression of the homage, rendered by, God himself, to that which we reject; and the only object of his mission is to bring us back into a like free obedience to the same, lovely requirement. His poverty and patience, his weary, persecuted life his agony, his cross, his death — exclude from these all thmtght of penal suffer- ing or vindictive chastisement, regard him simply as thtjs suppokting the CALL OF DUTY, and signifying to mankind the self-renouncing and subliine obedience of the divine nature," 19 fulfilment of His own eternal obligation — in which, by simply supporting the call of duty, and signifying to man- kind the self-renouncing and sublime obedience of the di- vine nature, [p. 227,] He aimed to bring us, by this example, back into a like free obedience to the same lovely requirement ; and incidentally he died rather than depart from this work. -[201.J ^^ VI. — Justification by Faith. 1. The Object of the Faith. 2. Nature of the Justification. 3. The Ground of Justification. 1. The object of the faith by which the sinner is justified, is not Christ as the Redeemer whose blood was really shed for the remission of sins ; for no such sacrifice was rendered, and none was needed, in order that God might be just, and the justifier of the sinner. If God had accepted such a sacrifice, it would have been both unjust and absurd, and a sufficient ground for rejecting him as the God of our love and worship [pp. 199-201.] [See under Atonement.] 2. The sinner has no remission of sins through the merits of Christ's atoning blood : nor is Justification " An act of God's free grace, wherein he pardoneth all our sins, and ac- cepteth us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us and received by faith alone ;" nor for any consideration based on any vicarious or atoning sacrifice of Christ. If the sinner believes in such a sacrifice, and rests his soul upon it, this is not believing and resting in the truth, but in error [p. 268]. The sinner is to understand by the suf- ferings and death of Christ, that God had proposed to express — not penalty or abhorrence of sin, but — only his love, and what God will do, without punishment and without the expression of penalty or abhorrence, for the practical establishment of his law. [See under Atonement.] Coming with this undfer- [P. 268.]— " First, we have whatmay be called the Protestant form, whioh takes the ritualistic side of the Gospel, the ohjeotive side, turns it into dog- ma, and repeats it as a theoretic or theologic truth. And then though -U be no longer a truth, the/orwiof a truth, and so far a, divine power lingers in it." 20 standing to the spectacle of Christ's life and incidental death, the sinner is to take courage and receive assurance, being eon* vinoed that his terrors of the condemning sentence of the law are groundless, and that visibly God is not the implacable avenger his guilty fears had painted [pp. 213-216]. This belief is saving faith [p. 214]. This assurance is Justifica- tion [p. 214]. / [P. 213-216.] " An indescribable dread of eril still overhangs the human / spirit. The being is haunted by shadows of wrath and tries all painful me- , thodsof self pacification. Vigils, pilgrimages, sacrifices, tortures, nothing ; is too painful or wearisome that promises to ease the guilt of the mind.' Without any speculations about justification, mankind refuse to justify them- selves. A kind of despair fills the heart of the race. They have no cour- age. Whether.they know Grod or not, they know themselves, and they sen- tence themselves to death. If they have only some obscure notions of a di- vine Being, then they dread the full discovery of him. If he lurks in their gods, they fear lest their gods should visit them in vengeance, or plague them by some kind of mischief. The sky is full of -wrathful powers, and the deep ground also is full. Their-guilty soul peoples the world with venge- ful images of its own creation." [P . 214. ] " And here,'iiow, if we desire to find it, is the true idea of Christian Justification. We discover what it is by the want of it. Justification is that which vrili give confidence, again, to guilty minds ; that which will assure the base and humiliated soul of the world, chase away the demons of wrath and despair it has evoked, and help it to return to God in courage, whispering still to itself — soul be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee." -'' In short he [Christ,] lives confidence into the world. Apart from all theologic theories, we /enow, we see with our eyes, that God will justify us and give us still his peace. And then , when we truly come unto him , believing that Christ the Word is He, when forsaking all things for him, we embrace him as our Mfe, thenare ■^e practically justified. It is impossible for us to fear. No guilt of the past can disturb lis ; a peace that jpasseth understandiug fills our nature. Being Justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. " Or, if we advert, iu'this connection, to the sufferings and death of Christ, we shall see how these, without the imputation of any penal quality or frown of God upon his person, have a special efficacy in fortifying our assurance, or hope of justification with God. Dismiss all speculation about the mode, pos- sibility , interior reality of this suffering ; understand that God, having propos- ed,"in this manner, to express his love, ali logical, theological, ontological, phy- Sioiogioal qu'estions are, by the supposition, out of place. Come, then, to the spectacle of Christ's suffering life and death, as tp a mystery wholly transcend- ent, save in what it expresses of Divine feeling. Call what oithisjeeling you receive, the reality — all else the machina Dei for the expression of this. With deepest reverence of soul, approach that most mysterious sacrament of love, the agony of Jesus ; note the patience of his trial, the meekness of his sub- mission to injustice, and the malignant passions of his enemies ; behold the creation itself darkening and shuddering with a horror of Bensibili*y at the scene transpiring in his death ; hear the cry of the crucified — " Father, for- give them, for they know not what they do ;" then regard the life that was manifested, dropping into cessation, and thereby signifying the deposite of itself in the bosom or that malSgn world to whose enmity it is yielded, — ^who, what man of our race beholding this strange history of the Word, will not feel a new courage enter mto Am soul ? Visibly, God is not the implaca- ble AVEN&ERHis guilty FEAHs HAD PAINTED. But He isiafrieud, he SsloTe And so great is this change, apart from all theology, that I seem even to see 21 3. The ground of Justification is not the sacrifice which Christ has made to answer the eoncfemning sentence of the law, but it is the righteousness which is prepared in us [pp. 254-258]. Christ is riot really our sacrifice or atonement, another ciaraoter produced t>y it in the Christian nations. They dare toJaype. God is closer to them, and in a way to inspire courage. They are not with- ered, humiliated even to baseness, under those guilty and abject fears, thattake away at last the spirit of other nations. It is not that they have all a theory of justification byfaifh, but that their current conceptions of God are such as the history of Jesus, the suffering Eedeemer, has imparted. They have a feeling of something like justification, even if they never heard of it — a feel- ing, which, if it were to vent itself iu language, would say — Therefore we are freely justified by grace. It is not that the suffering appeases God, but that it expresses God« — displays, in open history, the unconquerable love of Gods Heart." [P. 254.] "The moral propriety, then, or possibility, nay, in one Tiew, THE GROTJWD OF JusTiFicATioW, is Bubjectirely prepared in us; viz., in a state or impression, a sense of the sacredness of law, produced in tjs, hj Christ's life and death. But we cannot think of it in this artificial way ; most persons could make nothing of it. We must transfer this subjective state or impression, this grounh of justification, and produce it outwardly, if possible, in some objective form; as if it had some effect on the law or on God. The Jew had done the same before us, and we follow him ; representing Christ as our sacrifice, sin-offering, atonement, or sprinkling of blood. Now in all these terms, we representa work as done outwardly for us, which is really done in us, and through impressions prepared in us, but the more ade- cpiately and truly still, for the reason that we have it in mystic forms before us. These forms are the objective equivalent of our subjective impressions. Indeed, our impressions have their life and power in and under these forms. Neither let it be imagined that we only happen to seize upon these images of sacrifice, atonement, and blood, because they are at hand. They are prepar- ed, as Gods form of art, for the representation of Christ and his work ; and if we refuse to let him pass into this form, we have no mold of thought that can fitly represent him. And when he is thus represented, we are to under- stand that he is our sacrifice and atonement, that by his blood we have re- mission, not in any speculative sense, but as in art. We might as well think to come at the statue of Aristidea speculatively, interpreting its power by geometric demonstrations, instead of giving our heart to the expression of integrity in the form, as to be scheming and dogmatizing over these words atonement, sin-offering^ sacrifice, and blood, which are the divine form of Christianity.